19PHY102 Engineering Physics – B

B Tech. Mech A & B I SEM

Academic Year 2021-2022(ODD Semester)
Dr. Sreekanth K M,
Assistant Professor Sr. Gr.,
Department of sciences,
Amrita School of Engineering,
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham,
Amritanagar, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu,
India- 641 112.
Email: [email protected]

28/10/2021
Unit I: Mechanics

Newton’s laws of motion - forces, frictional forces, dynamics of uniform circular motion,
work, kinetic energy, work-energy theorem, potential energy, conservation of energy,
Newton’s law of gravitation, motion in uniform gravitational field, centre of mass,
conservation of linear and angular momentum
Drag Force

Friction isn’t the only “hidden” force that robs objects of their motion and obscures
Newton’s first law. Objects moving through fluids like water or air experience drag forces
that oppose the relative motion of object and fluid. Ultimately, drag results from collisions
between fluid molecules and the object. The drag force depends on several factors, including
fluid density and the object’s cross-sectional area and speed.
Terminal Speed

When an object falls from rest, its speed is initially low and so is the velocity-dependent
drag force. It therefore accelerates downward with nearly the gravitational acceleration g.
But as the object gains speed, the drag force increases—until eventually the drag force and
gravity have equal magnitudes. At that point the net force on the object is zero, and it falls
with constant speed, called its terminal speed.
Because the drag force depends on an object’s area and the gravitational force depends on its
mass, the terminal speed is lower for lighter objects with large areas.

A parachute, for example, is designed specifically to have a large surface area that results,
typically, in a terminal speed around 5 m/s. A ping-pong ball and a golf ball have about the
same size and therefore the same area, but the ping-pong ball’s much lower mass leads to a
terminal speed of about 10 m/s compared with the golf ball’s 50 m/s. For an irregularly
shaped object, the drag and thus the terminal speed depend on how large a surface area the
object presents to the air. Skydivers exploit this effect to vary their rates of fall.
A fluid is anything that can flow—generally either a gas or a liquid. When there is a relative
velocity between a fluid and a body (either because the body moves through the fluid or
because the fluid moves past the body), the body experiences a drag force “D’’ that opposes
the relative motion and points in the direction in which the fluid flows relative to the body.

Here we examine only cases in which air is the fluid. In such cases, the magnitude of the
drag force is related to the relative speed v by an experimentally determined drag coefficient
C according to
………… (1)

where ρ is the air density (mass per volume) and A is the effective cross-sectional area of the
body (the area of a cross section taken perpendicular to the velocity) and C is the drag
coefficient (typical values range from 0.4 to 1.0).
This skier crouches in an “egg position” so as
to minimize her effective cross-sectional area
and thus minimize the air drag acting on her.
 ……….(2) where m is the mass of the body.
As shown in Fig., if the body falls long enough, D eventually
equals Fg.

From the above Eq. (2), this means that a = 0, and so the body’s
speed no longer increases. The body then falls at a constant
speed, called the terminal speed vt.
The forces that act on a body falling through air: (a) the body when it has just begun to fall
and (b) the free body diagram a little later, after a drag force has developed. (c) The drag
force has increased until it balances the gravitational force on the body. The body now falls
at its constant terminal speed.
To find vt, we set a = 0 in Eq. 2 and substitute for D from Eq. 1, obtaining

………… (3)
Sample Problem: Terminal speed of falling raindrop

(a) The raindrop reaches terminal speed after falling just a few meters. What is the terminal
speed? (b) What would be the drop’s speed just before impact if there were no drag force?
(a)
 Air density ρa and the water density ρw

(b) Because we know the acceleration is g, the initial velocity v0 is 0, and the displacement
x- x0 is -h,
Work and Energy

Two skiers.
Work:

Equation 1 shows that the SI unit of work is the newton-meter (N-m). One newton-meter is one joule.
Work can be positive or negative (see the Fig. given below).
When a force acts in the same general direction as the motion, it does positive work.
A force acting at to the motion does no work.
And when a force acts to oppose motion, it does negative work.
EXAMPLE 1: Calculating Work: Pushing a Car

The person (as shown in Fig.) pushes with a force of 650 N,

moving the car a distance of 4.3 m. How much work does he
do?

EXAMPLE 2: Calculating Work: Pulling a Suitcase

The airline passenger in Fig. exerts a 60-N force on her suitcase, pulling at
35o to the horizontal. How much work does she do in pulling the suitcase
45 m on a level floor?

The answer of 2.2 kJ is less than the product of 60 N and 45 m, and

that makes sense because only the x-component of that 60-N force
contributes to the work.